A Maximoff Holiday
by Azure Lightning Emerald Cloud
Summary: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff experience first hand the brutality of war as their MCU origin is explored and they start their journey to becoming Avengers. Avengers: Age of Ultron spoilers are a definite probability. All rights go to their respective owners like Joss Whedon, Marvel Comics, and Marvel Studios, but certainly not me, except the dialogue and plot nuances.
1. Chapter 1: A Red Hanukkah

**I do not own any of these Marvel properties like the characters that show up in Marvel Comics or the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the basic story that is outlined in Avengers: Age of Ultron.**

* * *

"Wanda, put the menorah on the table, and then go wash your hands," Rasa Maximoff called from the kitchen. "Pietro, use soap, that was way to quick for my liking," she scolded her little boy as he exited the small bathroom after washing his hands in preparation for dinner. He went back to wash his hands properly the second time around as little Wanda brushed past him and laid the menorah on the table. Rasa Maximoff was a tall woman with world-weary green eyes and her long hair in a ponytail. She was in many ways typical, other than perhaps her notable height and beauty, for a mother in Sokovia in her early thirties with two children, despite them being twins.

"When is papa getting home?" Wanda asked, practically bouncing up and down, a spitting image of her mother already at 10 years old.

"He'll be home any minute now," her mother called as she finished moving the latkes from the boiling oil to a paper towel covered plate. She covered the plate with another, upside down to preserve the heat while they waited for Anton to return home from work from the nearest university.

"So, Pietro, who's your new girlfriend?" Wanda fired tonight's opening salvo across the table at her smug looking twin.

"None of your business," Pietro replied, flush like a tomato. "Aren't you going to tell mama how well you did on your English test?" he fired back.

It was Wanda's turn to blush as their mother; Rasa's eyes flitted between her two children with a grin beginning at the corner of her mouth.

"So, how did it go?" Rasa asked Wanda gently. By this point, all three of them could hear scattered gunshots from across the district. But they were so used to it they thought nothing of it.

"I got an 80%..." Wanda mumbled despondently, eyes not quite meeting her mother's.

"Well, there's room for improvement certainly," Rasa stated, but then she grinned at her young daughter, " for now you can be content that you're still on average 10% smarter than Pietro", she said. That shut down Pietro's increasingly taunting gaze. "Now that your prowess has been revealed, what's this about Pietro's girlfriend?" Rasa continued.

"What does 'prowess' mean?" Wanda asked.

"It means your progress so far." Rasa replied. "This is why we speak English in the evenings, so that you learn faster. English in the morning is a bit much to ask, even for me; but your father wouldn't really have a problem with it. Anyway, I can tell you're dying to rat out Pietro's love life," Rasa said grinning at her kids.

"Well, you know Viktoriya? The girl who lives two floors below us? She and Pietro were holding hands together after class!" Wanda squealed, genuinely thinking the pair a cute couple. She only really brought it up initially to preemptively deflect from the inevitable test score she suspected Pietro would drop on her.

Pietro, not one to back down, said, " That's right, I do like her, so there!" he crossed his arms and stared stubbornly at the empty menorah. Wanda was still grinning uncontrollably while Rasa just sighed.

A key jangled in the lock of the door. The twins sniggered as their father struggled with the lock, as he almost always did. Rasa rolled her eyes as she got up and aided her quirky husband. Anton Maximoff finally stepped over the threshold and Rasa brought him into a deep kiss, much to the chagrin of the twins who made assorted gagging noises and averted their eyes. Anton and Rasa looked into each other's eyes with an unspoken understand transpired between them: love is no match for a bullet or a bomb. Each time one of them crossed the threshold into each other's arms or the eager screams of their children it is a victory. Anton, having been released from Rasa's embrace was mobbed by his kids. Pietro got there first, but Wanda wasn't far behind.

After a family hug, the kids returned to their places as Anton set about shedding his coats and scarf. After all, Sokovian winters are not the most pleasant of conditions in which to be exposed to the elements. Anton took a deep breath, inhaling the latke's fried potato goodness. He cracked a grin of anticipation, an identical grin his daughter showed off once in a while when she was truly ecstatic. " Wanda, Pietro, one of you fetch the matches and the other the candles, lets light this thing!" Anton said in his heavily Sokovian accented English.

"No you don't!" Rasa lightly slapped her husband's hand as he surreptitiously reached for one of the latkes on the serving plate. Anton bashfully put his hands up in a surrendering motion as Wanda and Pietro a few meters away found their assigned items.

Rasa winked at Pietro and Wanda, returning to the table as she expertly filched one of the latkes for herself, mocking a stunned Anton before gloating, "You didn't see that coming."

A flash of crimson heat and thunder opened a hole where the table had been. Rasa and Anton's laughs died on their faces as they were plunged into the hell that had just devoured the lower half of their apartment complex. Wanda's tears came gushing instantly, even as the next volley of mortar rounds came plummeting down on their home.

* * *

A/N: Hey, this is the first part to a short story I'll end up writing surrounding the situation the Maximoff Twins describe in the movie about why they align with Ultron. It always felt like an enemy of my enemy type alliance and this story tries to flesh out who they were and how they became hardened by a war that Tony Stark bankrolled. I started writing this because I felt this would've been an even more powerful moment to start the movie, it could've been like 3 minutes and it would've set up and develop so much. Anyway, this is me trying visualize that situation and fill that void for myself and any of you who feel as I do. Also, I'd appreciate any reviews because I want to know how to improve my story. More to come in the next couple weeks once I finish the stories for my class.


	2. Chapter 2: In the Ruins

**Chapter 2**

"Pietro?" Wanda turned to her brother who was still looking at the big hole that was where their parents had just been. They weren't speaking English now; the situation was just too dire to mess around with new languages. They had both been blasted back into their bedroom. From downstairs they could hear a kind of crying scream coming from a child. "Pietro, is that…?" Wanda couldn't finish the sentence before the building began to collapse. As the floor opened up they clambered onto their bed, hoping it would give them a non-fatal landing cushion. It did.

"Wanda? Wanda!" Pietro broke into a fit of coughs as he slowly scrambled toward his sister who had fallen off the bed. When he reached her and realized that she was still very much alive, he cast his eyes to the sky. Well, not the sky but the ruins of their home. If he was looking for a sign from his God, it didn't come, just more dust and bits of rubble pouring down.

" Pietro." Wanda's face was slick with blood and sweat and tears as she lightly tugged his sleeve. She was pointing toward the sobbing noises emanating from the rubble pile where the screams had been coming from. As they both made their way over to the sobbing they glanced around desperately for any sign of their parents, but they couldn't find anything other than a couple blood-splattered areas covered in stone. Well, Wanda noticed their parents' remains, and almost retched, but Pietro was distracted in trying to find the source of the sobbing. Wanda waited a moment for Pietro to get ahead of her, so she could have an uninterrupted moment taking in the bloodstained stones where almost doubtless her parents were crushed under.

"Help?" a whimper emanated from the pile of rubble just ahead of them.

"Viktoriya?" Pietro replied weakly. He scrambled a little faster towards the voice, but only then he realized she was another floor beneath them. "Viktoriya! He cried out, but there was no answer, only a fit of desperate coughing from below. He turned back to realize Wanda was a couple meters behind him and said with tears in his eyes, "we have to help her," and then noticed the tears running down her face, " Wanda? Please?" Wanda quickly brushed away all visibility of her sadness and advanced to a point where she too could peer out over the ledge down towards where Viktoriya was.

"I think we can make the jump," Wanda said. She was hugging herself, but the resolve in her eyes bespoke steel within. "Look, there, there's a couple pillows scattered, if we aim for those we can avoid getting hurt too bad." Before Pietro could reply, she launched herself into the dusty haze below, landing on the pillow she pointed out earlier with a small cry.

"Wanda! Are you okay?!" Pietro shouted down to her. Wanda looked back up with a pained face rubbing her butt as she crawled off the pillow. Despite the horrors surrounding, Pietro's face flickered with the ghost of his signature shit-eating grin that was on display at dinner not ten minutes earlier. "Wanda, I'm coming down," he said as he too jumped for the pillow. He landed no more gracefully than his sister, and it was Wanda's turn to flash her teeth, as it was his turn to realize landing on his butt wasn't a great feeling. The apartment complex shook as mortars landed nearby, off target? It didn't matter where the target was or the intentions behind the attack, at least not from the Twins' perspective. Wanda looked around and saw shiny shrapnel imbedded in the walls around them, realizing that this was probably where the mortar hit. They moved towards the remnants of a kitchen counter as they neared the sobbing. There was a hole in the wall that looked like where a medium to small sized refrigerator used to be. The pair crept through that hole and sure enough, there was food littered all over the place, forming a sort of trail through another wall destroyed. There was a pool of milk that was just through the next wall. The two children paused a moment to survey the solitary puddle of white, but then it was joined further into the room by two streams of red as they looked up to see where the fridge had landed…

"Pietro?" came a confused whimper from a face whose green eyes were far too large from the pain. Wanda gasped, and Pietro just covered his mouth as tears formed in his eyes now.

Viktoriya's legs and part of her lower body were under the refrigerator. It must've blown backwards through the walls when the mortar hit, probably shielding Viktoriya from the initial blast, only to pin her to her bedroom wall. Without exchanging so much as a word, they made to get the fridge off of her. So they braced themselves against the wall and lifted, and to their surprise, it left the ground. They were able to shift it into a standing position, and they pushed it over away from them. Viktoriya's legs were broken, that much was obvious from the bones protruding from her shins, and her screams as they lifted the small fridge. They suddenly felt the heat from another explosion not too far off as the building shook again. A splintering crash brought a shell plummeting down in front of them, not two feet away and blocking their exit as debris rained down on them in it's wake. All three children's eyes were alight with horror. when the dust settled. The entrance they came in from was obscured by debris. The Shell had landed square in the puddle of bloody milk, it's logo facing the children. It was emblazoned with the name every child dreaded in a war zone: Stark.

* * *

Author's Note: Hey, I'm sorry it took me months to update. But I'll try and do better with the next chapter. Chapter Three might be the final one in this short vignette from the MCU. For those who read, please leave a review just to let me know what you lot thought of it. To the one person who reviewed my last chapter, you made my day.


	3. Chapter 3: Night and Bone

**A/N** : This is a short chapter I know, but more will follow, and I felt this was a good bit to post in its own chapter. Please review and follow if you're feeling kind.

* * *

 **Part III**

"Pietro, I'm cold," was the first thing Viktoriya said after the shell landed. There wasn't snow in the air, but the howling of the winds brought a chill into the hollowed out building. Through a miracle, there was a half-burnt overcoat that was just within Wanda's reach. As she pulled it free from the destroyed coat stand, she accidentally shook some of the debris, which made a horrifying grating sound as wood grinded against stone. Luckily, nothing fell to disturb the bomb that lay in front of them.

The three children were huddled together like puppies, trying to keep warm. Viktoriya shrieked as Wanda moved to adjust the overcoat to cover her a little more.

"We need to fix her leg," Wanda proposed to her brother as he tried to sooth his whimpering crush. "See how the bone is sticking out of her leg? If we just pull her foot a little, it should slide back into place," she stated firmly.

Pietro looked at her like she was crazy for a moment but then looked back at Viktoriya's mangled leg and nodded tacitly, acknowledging his sister's superior knowledge of injury fixing. Wanda moved very slowly into a squatting position at Viktoriya's foot. The Stark emblazoned shell was just alongside her, and she was hyper aware that if nudged it would end them all. She shot a pointed look at Pietro, nodding toward Viktoriya's pale hand. Pietro took that pale hand in his.

"Viktoriya? I need you to squeeze my hand as hard as you want, ok? This is going to hurt," Pietro gently told her. Viktoriya did as he asked, eyes full of pain and fear as she tilted her head back in quiet agony.

"Viktoriya. Tell me when," Wanda said, hands just barely touching Viktoriya's boot, almost like a midwife; a small ten year old wide-eyed bomb battered midwife.

At Viktoriya's nod, Wanda immediately began to pull Viktoriya's foot toward her, keeping it at the same angle the whole while. Viktoriya's scream reverberated around the room they were trapped in, but no doubt any would-be rescuer picking through the debris could hear her as well. The bone that was sticking out gently slipped back into her leg and into place as Wanda relinquished her compatriot's foot.

Viktoriya's face now was wet with fresh tears as she nestled her head into Pietro's shoulder. He held her awkwardly as any ten year old would do after such a traumatic procedure. Wanda crept back into her previous position on Viktoriya's left side, putting her arm around them both, hugging them tight as she quietly began to sob.


	4. Chapter 4:Hope and Fever

**Part IV**

A day passed, the night had come and gone, the sun was in the sky, raised over a proud Sokovia, and set again, bringing the wind and the chill. There were a lot of people running around, sorting through rubble, and there was a tarp laid out just out of the way of the ruins. On the tarp was laid the bloodied remains that could be salvaged from the recovery effort so far. But the three children had all survived the cold. The three children in question had seen better days, but they were alive. Of course, the would-be rescuers didn't know this yet as the cleanup effort was basically just the locals with no government effort of any kind; the earliest that could be expected was a few days at the earliest.

Tony Stark had spared the children during the night. Spared may be putting it kindly, the shell hadn't gone off yet due to some malfunction. The three children clinging to each other didn't know this, but the odds of the Stark Industries top shelf material not performing was astronomical.

The first thing Wanda realized as she woke up was the smell: the permeating stench of death. No doubt dozens of corpses buried, mangled, laid within meters of them, whether they be below, to the sides, or above. She didn't realize that after only a day and a half, the smell would only get worse. She peered around, seeing that both the girl Viktoriya and her twin Pietro were still asleep. After a few minutes of just sitting there and looking around, the full force of their situation hit her, and the light in her eyes that shone at her last family dinner faded.

Viktoriya stirred as she slowly woke, herself. Pietro however, was still very much asleep…and snoring quite loudly, which is probably what woke the uninitiated Viktoriya.

"Viktoriya? How's your leg?" Wanda said.

"It's a little better. Thank you," Viktoriya replied. She looked into the smaller girl's green eyes with her equally emerald ones. And then at the boy she liked, who was now drooling a little on her shoulder. Blushing slightly, she turned back to Wanda, she hesitated, and then said, "My older brother will find us, and save us. He's a firefighter."

"Was he in the building when-"

"No", Viktoriya cut Wanda off, with a gleam in her eye that was beginning to resemble hope. "He was on out when everything blew up, he was out on a date with his girlfriend. He'll come back for me, for us." She tried to shift herself with her hands, but quickly whimpered in pain. While her leg hadn't frozen, it still remained quite tender due to the debilitating fracture. Viktoriya's whimper woke Pietro, who looked at Wanda's helpless expression before wrapping his arm around Viktoriya again. The day expired without much incident, with the exception of Pietro wordlessly breaking down in sobs at one point. Wanda couldn't hold him, but she extended her hand onto his head and gently patted his head. Viktoriya, despite being the far worse off of the three, put her arm around him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Pietro stopped crying for a moment, and then softly, inevitably, buried his head into the crook between Viktoriya's neck and shoulder. They remained like this for quite some time. Wanda locked eyes with Viktoriya as a silent understanding went between them and Wanda slowly, gently kissed Viktoriya on her warm forehead and set Viktoriya's head on her own shoulder, holding the three of them together as her own head came to rest on top of their new raven-haired friend.

Hours later, there was a sudden shift as bricks and rubble came tumbling down about 8 meters in front of them. All three of them as one turned their eyes to the bomb sitting in their midst. And… silence. The bomb did not detonate; it just sat there, partially imbedded in the bedrock of the building. Though she didn't realize it, Wanda had begun trembling, her blood burning hot with fear as dust settled on the Stark weapon in their midst. The sun was getting low again, and the temperature again, started to fall. Viktoriya began to cough, and throughout the night, her quiet spasms kept them all awake. Though to be faire, the moving of the rocks by their would-be rescuers would've kept them awake and partially paralyzed with fear anyway. Pietro felt Viktoriya's forehead, which was slick with sweat and locked eyes with Wanda over his crush's damp raven hair. They could both feel their friend's climbing fever.

The simple truth is that there was nothing much that they could do about it. They extricated Viktoriya from the jacket they shared, and draped it across her legs and feet lest the cold try to bite them; carefully avoiding the bomb all the while, as there were banging noises outside as the men continued the rescue attempt. Viktoriya was now out cold and radiating heat. The twins connected eyes as they wordlessly exchanged frightful glances both upward, towards the bomb, and then finally towards their companion. The Sun would not appear for another few hours, but the twins both clung to Viktoriya as they both fruitlessly tried to glean some sleep between the rustling of rocks above, the patient bomb, and the winter chill; the latter of which was fended off by Viktoriya's invisible flames.

* * *

A/N: Hey, I'm back. Thanks for reading! Please review/follow this story if it's to your liking!


	5. Chapter 5: 42nd Hour

The children awoke to a thundering crash. Both Pietro and Wanda yelped in fright, Viktoriya stirred as she woke slower than her new friends. A section of the wall that had once held a cabinet of liqueur now was gone as there was a great deal of shouting coming from outside. The sky of pale grey was thick with dust and smoke. In the distance was the almost ever-present little pop pops of gunfire and thunder of bombs and mortars. The rescuers outside had made considerable progress during the night.

In front of them still, the Bomb Emblazoned Stark was waiting to devour them all. "You know, I'll never get tired of frost-breath," Viktoriya breathed as said frost almost seeped from her mouth up into the daylight. Wanda and Pietro glanced at each other over Viktoriya's head with a tinge of worry in their eyes.

"Hey, Viktoriya," Wanda ventured, "Are you feeling any better or worse?"

Viktoriya tilted her head so it was lying on Wanda's shoulder. Viktoriya whispered into her ear, "I feel the same. But I can't feel my legs below the knees anymore." There was a small breeze that drifted down to them as Viktoriya made this confession, Wanda squeezed Viktoriya's hand with her left, and held the smaller girl's head to the crook of her neck as Viktoriya began to slowly cry. Pietro took her other hand and they just sat there like that for a while.

"Hey! You down there! Are you alive!" a voice shouted down to them in English from the street.

"Yes, Help us!" Pietro called back in an accented high-pitched rasp. The deprivation of water showed in his voice.

"Hey, Viktoriya, we're going to get out of here, ok?" Wanda whispered. Viktoriya just nodded into Wanda's shoulder, still lightly crying. Wanda squeezed Viktoriya a little closer in a tight hug. "How are we going to get her out?" Wanda mouthed at Pietro over Viktoriya's head. Her twin looked tired, but he also had that same quizzical expression she wore about the issue of safely evacuating their friend who obviously wasn't physically walking out of this.

"Hey, kids down there! We're going rappel down and get you, ok!" the same English voice called down. British from the sound of it, but the twins couldn't really place it more specifically.

The twins both looked to the shell in front of them before Pietro called back up, "There is bomb down here. Didn't explode." The man didn't respond immediately. But when he did, he was focused and decisive, "Ok, we'll find a different entry point if we can. It's important you don't lose hope! How many of you are down there?"

This time Wanda replied in an equally raspy tone as her brother, "Three! But one of us is hurt. She –can't walk." Wanda's voice wavered a little at the end there as she looked at Viktoriya's mangled legs. There were a few minutes before there was another reply. The voices from the outside came from above and slightly behind them, so they couldn't see the faces of the foreigners trying to help them. A female voice called down to them this time with a French accent, "We couldn't find another way to you kids, so we'll just have to be careful. We'll get the two of you who can stand first so that we'll have room to get the injured out as well. We are Médecins sans frontières. We will get you children out of there safely,'


	6. Part VI: A Leaf in the Wind

**Part VI**

The first two rescuers slowly lowered their excess rope down towards the children so as to not disturb the bomb. One woman and one man rappelled down tentatively but purposefully. "Okay," the woman began, but upon seeing Viktoriya's ruined lower legs, she paused as her eyes narrowed in thought and sadness. Exchanging a look with her male colleague, she quickly grabbed and secured Wanda while he did the same with Pietro. "We will come back for your friend," she told Wanda, upon her reluctance, clinging to Viktoriya's arm. Wanda looked up at the aid worker, with eyes full of tears and a little bit of hope amid the horror.

Pietro was similarly reluctant to leave Viktoriya, but relented, following his sister's lead. "Wanda? Pietro?" Viktoriya spoke, with a rising pitch from the fear of now being alone. Her frail hands scrabbled desperately at their heels as their rescuers brought them to safety.

Once Wanda and Pietro gained their feet again, out of danger, the male rescuer went right back in for Viktoriya. The twins were lead some metres away, and bottle of water was thrust into Wanda's hands, they'd have to share. Wanda looked up and saw the female rescuer pass down a power saw the male rescuer had a gaunt look about him…oh no no no, her legs… Wanda began running back over to them, ignoring her brother's hand on her shoulder, pulling away and running faster. "Don't hurt Viktoriya!" the little girl screamed in Sokovian before she was thrown back like a leaf on the wind.

boom.


End file.
